Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:15 pm on 5 June 2018.
Can I thank the Member for his question, and the many questions he's asked on behalf of his constituents, and rightly so? He asks what I have done. I was in Washington last week. I had several meetings there, including meetings with British embassy staff. We worked through what needed to be done next. It's not clear, because the US Government can be unpredictable, if I can put it that way. It's been made clear many, many times to the US that, actually, steel from Wales and steel from the UK does not pose a threat to the American steel industry. Many of the products that we export to the States are not made in the States. All that will happen is the price will go up for the American consumer. What we are not clear about is what effect there will be in terms of tariffs. I know in Trostre, for example, that exports to the US are a very profitable part of that business, and it's not clear, actually, whether Trostre will still be able to continue to sell to the US, if only for the fact the US doesn't produce what Trostre produces. But, as I said earlier on, what's hugely important is that we don't see steel that was previously bound for the US market ending up in the European market, causing a drop in the price of steel. That inevitably would not help in terms of the long-term sustainability of our industry.